‘What about her?’ Sev queried with a bemused frown.
‘You humiliated her as well and, like me, she was an innocent party. Couldn’t you have had some consideration and taken your revenge in a way that was less painful for me and for her? No,’ Amy answered curtly for herself. ‘You wouldn’t have done that because you wanted to be in at the kill and see my father’s face as you exposed him. But that doesn’t excuse you any more than your sister’s hurt excuses you for harming innocent people.’
‘I have not harmed you in any way!’ Sev shot back at her with a growling edge of frustration.
‘Do Ilookhappy to you? Did it ever occur to you that I may have had a dream about my unknown father, a dream in which I hadoneparent who, if he actually met me, wouldn’t despise me? And did it ever occur to you while you were playing your vengeful games that I could be falling in love with you? In love with a guy who doesn’t actually exist in the real world? A guy you were onlypretendingto be?’ Amy fired back at him shakily, her voice rising in tune with her distress.
‘You’ve only known me for a couple of weeks,’ Sev parried in scorching dismissal. ‘Nobody falls in love that fast or that easily.’
And he was so confident that he was right in that assumption, she recognised painfully as the colour in her clammy face drained away. Butshehad fallen for him like a ton of bricks, possibly because she hadn’t loved before, possibly because she had never met a man so attractive before, and she had trusted him instinctively and had let down all her defences. Now she felt gutted and guilty that she had been so susceptible, soweak.
‘I think I hate you and that should tell you a lot about how I feel,’ Amy said tightly. ‘I’ve never hated anyone before. I believe it’s time I went home.’
‘I want you to stay. I want to talk this out,’ Sev fired back at her impatiently.
‘There can be no talking it out. What’s done is done...and you’re not even sorry, which says it all really,’ Amy muttered in a brittle undertone. ‘You don’t understand or accept that what you did to me tonight was cruel and wrong...and that this whole pretence you went through with me was even more dishonest and shameful. Everything was a lie.’
‘No, it wasn’t!’ Sev bit out rawly, his fists clenching. ‘I only concealed what I knew about you when we first met. That was thesolepretence! Everything since then has been one hundred per cent truthful and real.’
‘Sev, you only brought me into your life and kept me there to ensure that I went to that party tonight...how is that not a pretence? How is that real?’
The silence stretched taut as a rubber band stretched too tight.
‘Do I still qualify for a lift home?’ Amy enquired abruptly, standing at the front door, thinking thatnothingabout Sev had been real. He hadn’t really been a nice guy, blind to the difference in their social status and income. In truth, whatever she had looked like and however she had behaved, Sev had intended to march her out to confront her father with his daughter at that party.
‘Diomio...’Sev bit out. ‘What the hell do you think I am?’
‘A devious bastard with about as much decent feeling, compassion and humility as the average rock,’ Amy framed unevenly. ‘Tell me one last thing—are you planning to keep Harley or was that also a confidence trick designed to impress me?’
‘Of course I’m keeping Harley!’ Sev thundered back at her.
‘Do you know why you prefer animals to people?’ Amy breathed fiercely. ‘Animals don’t care about your morals and they don’t answer back.’
‘Is that it? Are you finished now?’ Sev shot at her in the rushing silence that seemed to assault her ears. Her stomach was churning, and her chest was tight. Even sucking in a breath hurt. It had just dawned on her that she was never ever going to see him again and that felt like a hammer blow even though she knew it shouldn’t, even though she knew she had had a lucky escape, a welcome wake-up call to reality, whatever anyone wanted to call it.
‘Yes, I’m finished,’ she murmured flatly, and it was true, she had nothing left to say. He had hurt her and there was nothing she could do about it. She wasn’t connected to Sev, she wasn’t close to him, she wasn’t anything she had thought she was. Talking to a guy like him about love was a joke, a pathetic, foolish joke, and she wished she had kept her mouth shut.
‘Reconsider,’ Sev urged in a grudging, deep undertone as he drew out his phone. ‘I won’t run after you...that’s not my style.’
‘I’ll live,’ Amy told him, unable to resist the urge to steal a last look at him, violet eyes scanning the sheer chiselled beauty of his proud dark features. Her gaze lingered on the artful hollows and angles of his spectacular bone structure that lent him such charismatic presence, and took in the challenge of those liquid-bronze eyes that telegraphed more angry frustration than remorse. She lifted her chin in defiance and turned away again.
Within minutes she was tucked into the limousine, travelling home in style for the last time ever, and painful tears were squeezing out below her lowered eyelids, stinging her skin as they trickled down her cheeks, slow and silent in their fall. She sucked in a steadying breath and forced herself to look out of the window at the brightly lit shops. Christmas would be here soon, and she wasn’t about to let him spoil Christmas as well, was she?
She would allow herself one night to grieve, she told herself ruefully. Sev had just been a dream that didn’t pan out, a silly girlish fantasy. She should have smelt a rat from the outset when a guy of his calibre showed interest in someone as ordinary as she was, but who didn’t want to believe that a dream could come true? She had been too busy being flattered, charmed and seduced by his interest and she had stopped using her brain, hadn’t even looked for flaws and inconsistencies. At least Harley had got a home out of it all! She pressed her trembling hands to her face and told herself to stop beating herself up for what she couldn’t help or change. She would survive, she had survived worse, she told herself dully.
Ironically and for the first time ever she was feeling sympathy for her late mother. What must it have been like for Lorraine to watch the man she loved pursue the boss’s daughter? And then for him to come back to her after the wedding, doubtless raising her hopes of reconciliation again? Amy grimaced. Somewhere deep down inside where she didn’t explore very often she had had a little dream that her mother might have been wrong about her father and that he might, after all, have wanted her more than he had been prepared to admit. But she had seen the ugly truth of that childish dream in Oliver Lawson’s stricken face that very evening. He had been horrified by her appearance and clearly much more concerned about how his unfortunate wife would react to the revelation of Amy’s existence and how that might impact on his own life. And poor, unhappy Annabel, Amy thought sadly, who had pinned her romantic hopes on such a lying, cheating coward of a man, who didn’t know what fidelity, or the truth, was.
Amy curled up in her bed with Hopper. She had never felt as alone in her life as she did at that moment. The evening, the fantasy outing in the gorgeous dress, had started out with such promise and she had been so excited,sohappy, and then it had all come crashing down like a roof on top of her and had almost buried her alive. Had Sev been right? Was it impossible to fall in love so fast? She hoped he was right. She didn’t want to feel gutted and miserable for months on end. Maybe it was only an infatuation, a sort of adult crush that would fade as swiftly as it had begun, especially now that he was out of her life again. At least she hadn’t told him that she loved him. She had only hung that possibility, that risk out there and he had looked at her in disbelief, as if she were certifiably insane.
He would give her a week to cool off, Sev decided grimly as he savoured his whiskey before heading for bed...alone! Not what he had expected, not what he had wanted. No woman had ever walked out on him before, especially not after he had admitted a particular interest. He had never done that before either, he acknowledged, didn’t know what it was about Amy, he only knew that when she had walked out of that door with her nose in the air he had wanted to physically yank her back andmakeher see sense. No one in their right mind would turn their back on the kind of chemistry they shared, he assured himself bracingly.
Amy had been hurt and understandably angry. Lawson had hurt her just as he had hurt Annabel, staring with cold distaste at her as though she had climbed up out of the gutter to confront him. Bastard! But if Sev had told Amy in advance of his plans, she would never have agreed to take part because she was far too kind to people in general...although not to him, he conceded angrily, his strong jawline clenching as he tried to recall when, if ever, his moral standards had been questioned. She had heldhimto account though, like a hanging judge and executioner.
Not quite the pushover he had assumed, he conceded, still furious with her and unable to sleep for the first time in years. She had made him feel guilty for setting her up, for putting her in that position with her sperm donor, but it wasn’t as though he could go back and change anything he had done now. A shame he refused to acknowledge or consider sat like a giant stone on his chest because Amy had been correct on one score: he hadn’t considered her feelings or Cecily Lawson’s when he’d plotted his revenge. Lawson would also be hearing from Sev’s lawyer concerning future arrangements for child support for Annabel’s child. That would end the whole horrid business and draw a line under it...though not if Sev lost Amy over his night’s work, he conceded ruefully.
He could tell her that he was sorry, even if that was untrue. He was sorry he had hurt her, sorry he had lacked the foresight to see what that scene with her father would do to a woman as tender-hearted as Amy was. But he stillwasn’tsorry for hitting back hard at Lawson for his misdoings. The instant that lowering idea of apologising crept into his brain, Sev turned over and punched his pillow in frustration. It would be a cold day in hell before he gave her a second chance! There were plenty of women out there in the world and few of them would question his principles. And they would also know better than to mention love.Love!Sev winced. Maybe he had dodged a bullet there; maybe she would have turned clingy.
Why was it that that idea wasn’t the turn-off it usually was? Why was it that the concept of Amy being clingy had the opposite effect? If she started phoning or texting him all the time, well, at least what she had to say was interesting and she was very undemanding and easy to be with, as well as absolutely everything he had ever dreamt of in bed. In the strangest way, she matched him...or at least, shehad...